Hot Topics:

Google asks US to let it publish data on security requests

By Brian Womack, Bloomberg News

Posted:
06/12/2013 07:34:11 AM MDT

SAN FRANCISCO - Google, operator of the world's most popular Internet search engine, is asking the U.S. government to let the company publish some details on national-security requests in its transparency report.

Google sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company wrote Tuesday in a blog post. The letter, included in the post, asked for the ability to report aggregate numbers of national-security requests.

Google, Apple, Microsoft and others denied a report by The Washington Post last week that outlined government snooping of servers of U.S. Internet companies.

By asking to publish the number of security requests, Google is seeking to "show that our compliance with these requests falls far short of the claims being made," David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer, wrote in the letter.

"Google has nothing to hide," Drummond's letter said. Transparency will "serve the public interest without harming national security," he said.

The administration of President Obama confirmed the existence of classified programs to collect data on U.S. residents' telephone calls and foreign nationals' Internet activity on June 6.

Obama defended the practice, saying the government's efforts are "modest encroachments" on privacy legally authorized by Congress and important to thwarting terrorist attacks.

Advertisement

Alexander Macgillivray, Twitter's general counsel, said in a post that the microblogging service supports Google's efforts.

Academics and computer-security specialists say there's a broad range of ways to harness the systems of the largest technology providers to monitor email, photos and video chats coursing through the Web.

Google said it complies with valid legal requests and doesn't give the U.S. government unfettered access to users' data. Google said that by publishing data about the requests in its Transparency Report, it will be able to prove to users that their data is mostly protected without harming national security. The report tracks requests for user data from courts and governments worldwide.

Facebook, Yahoo and Microsoft said they hand over data to the government only when required by law to do so. AOL, Apple and Paltalk.com all released statements saying they've never heard of the government monitoring program, called PRISM, and don't give the government direct access to servers without a court order.